Her inquisitive eyes told Patrick she was still fishing for information-he was glad for the rest, because he needed to stay sharp to avoid giving this beautiful, captivating, disarming woman any good intelligence data. "I know that, Susan," Patrick said. "But I'm counting on the combat operations to help screen our movements in a soft probe. You know as well as I do that security measures sometimes get curtailed when moving men and equipment is the most important thing."
"It's risky."
"She's worth the risk."
"I didn't mean to imply she wasn't," Susan said. "But if you're discovered, even if you can fight your way out, your entire operation is finished-they will kill your wife and erect an unpenetrable wall around every military and government base, building, or office. All you will have left… is retribution. Will that be enough for you?"
"I don't intend to let that happen."
"With all due respect, Patrick, that's a pretty bad attitude," Susan said directly. "Think about it for a moment. What if you did nothing? What if you did no probe at all, so your team never risked discovery? Your wife is probably in a Libyan medical facility badly injured, probably unconscious and unable to speak, so they will wait until she regains consciousness, which means you still have time to plan, locate her precisely, and wait for the perfect opportunity.
"If she is conscious, they may try to interrogate her. That could take days, perhaps weeks. If she talks, they will keep her alive to extract every bit of information from her. That still gives you time."
For the first time, Patrick reconsidered his plan. Susan was absolutely correct: There was nothing to be gained by going in now. War could break out any moment between Libya and Egypt, or just about anywhere in northern Africa, and Patrick and his team would be right in the middle of it. But holding back and waiting would put him no closer to rescuing Wendy. It didn't matter what Libya was planning against Egypt, or if war would break out any time for him, the most important thing was finding and rescuing Wendy.
"Thank you for your advice, Susan," Patrick said. "I'll take it into serious consideration."
Susan Bailey stood, stepped toward Patrick, and touched his shoulder. "What has happened to you, your wife, and your men is already a horrible tragedy," she said, "but please don't compound the tragedy by launching off on an impossible mission against overwhelming odds for an objective that you cannot define."
Patrick nodded, then opened up the door. "Dave." Luger appeared within seconds-obviously he was standing very close by. "Please escort Mrs. Salaam outside."
Susan looked into Patrick's eyes once more, but his deep-blue eyes were even more dark and inscrutable than before-he might as well have been wearing the strange high-tech helmet right now. She left without another word.
Patrick put on his flight suit and flying boots and went into the command center, where he met up with Hal Briggs. "Glad you got some shut-eye, Muck," he said. He motioned to a stack of CD-ROM disks inside an open metal briefcase. "Mrs. Salaam brought over tons of intel for us-some of it's only a few hours old. I doubt if even the U.S. government has this data." He looked at Patrick closely. His longtime friend was staring at the doorway where Susan Salaam had just exited. "What'd she have to say, Patrick?"
"Same as you-don't try going into Libya."
"Well, then I'll give her credit for more than being a drop-dead stone fox," Briggs quipped. "What are you going to do?"
Patrick picked up a few of the CD-ROMs and looked at their index labels. He chose a couple of them and headed for the portable computer terminals. "I'm going to do a little target study," he said.
"What does she want with us, Muck?" Hal asked.
"Same thing that the Central African Petroleum Partners want-to fight and die for them," Patrick replied. "I don't know if she wants revenge for her husband's assassination, or something else-but I've got my own agenda first."
It appears that Zuwayy has ignored our warning," Patrick McLanahan said grimly as he began the briefing a few hours later, "so we're going to put the strike plans in motion in about two hours."
His entire group of Night Stalkers were inside the semiunderground bunker reserved for them by Susan Bailey Salaam and General Baris, south of the airfield in an isolated part of the sprawling Egyptian joint forces base. Patrick was wearing his battle armor with the helmet on the table nearby, the power pack and electromagnetic rail gun plugged in and ready to go in just a few moments. He was definitely ready for battle.
"The primary target area will be the command-andcontrol center at Benina, ten miles east of Benghazi," Patrick went on. "It is located at a Libyan air force base, with a large mix of Russian and French fighters and transports based there, plus antiaircraft systems of all sizes. Our target is the air operations center." He displayed a highresolution image of the air base, with one building outlined with a red triangle. "This building is the headquarters of Libyan air combat operations in the eastern half of the country, and it is also an alternate national military command center. It forms the junction of all communications from the eastern half of the country to Tripoli.
"The attack will commence with a flight of three Wolverine cruise missiles, launched from over the Med," Patrick continued. "They will spread out and perform a coordinated multiaxis attack on the air defenses north of the city of Benina. Each Wolverine will attack three air defense sites with cluster munitions, followed by 'suicide' attacks on the air traffic control radar site, the northern security headquarters here, and the southern security headquarters, here. -
"The main attack will follow thirty seconds later-a flight of three more Wolverine cruise missiles. They will use a flight path cleared for them by the preceding Wolverine suppression attacks, but they will be programmed to divert if necessary to avoid any air defense sites missed or pop-up threats not targeted by the first flight." He switched slides to a close-up of a small cluster of buildings on the northeast side of the large two-runway airfield. "This is the Benina Command Center, headquarters of Libya's Eastern Joint Operations Center and Eastern Air Defense Sector. The heart of the facility is two stories underground, protected by twelve-inch reinforced concrete on each floor.
"Each Wolverine will carry two different warheads: a deep-target penetrating warhead using a rocket-propelled one-thousand-pound warhead, followed by a onethousand-pound thermium nitrate high-explosive warhead. Each Wolverine will travel a different flight path but will be programmed to hit the same spot; each missile will perform a pop-up push-over maneuver to drive the first warhead down through the roof to the subfloors, followed by the thermium detonation. The weapons should have no problems going through each level to the command center level, even if they put armor in we don't know about.
"As you know, the thermium warhead has the explosive power of five tons of TNT," Patrick went on, "so if the FlightHawk can determine if the target has been destroyed, we may divert the other Wolverines, probably the third one, to a secondary target, which is the military communications facility at Benina. If we need a tertiary target, we'll switch to the combination petroleum-fired power plant and desalination plant just east of Benghazi-that should turn out the lights and shut off the taps in Benghazi for quite some time."
Patrick displayed another map, this one of northwestern Egypt. Hal Briggs noted that Patrick's briefing was cool, calm, professional, and well under control. He had seen Patrick give countless reports and briefings over the fourteen years he had known him, and despite everything that had happened to him and everything they were, facing now, he seemed like the same emotionless all-business guy he'd always known. Yet in a way, this mission was much different: Although Patrick planned this mission as a strike against a very-high-value military target, Hal reminded himself, it was still a punitive strike-Patrick was simply lashing out at the Libyans. That was not like him at all.